I think I can answer your question quite well. I have been in the industry for around 8 years and yes, I do agree that you need to have a very solid technical grounding to make good progress being a system analyst/solution architect.

I see many fresh grads take up softer roles in the beginning of their career without any solid foundation, and while the progressions might be faster at first, over time gaps in their knowledge show up and this is very apparent to managers and senior people.

Doing ground level technical work will allow you to size up and evaluate solutions, your vendors and your team will not be able to bluff/smoke you that easily. Your brain will gain the ability to evaluate whether something makes sense and make rationalized technical assessments of solutions and problems. This skills is very important to climb up in the IT world. I am an IT manager right now in a hiring position now (who hires system analysts and business analysts), and I can tell you that I won't seriously consider a candidate who has not gone through at least 3 years of very technical work (programming is essential)